


It's Been a While

by HappyFork



Category: The Beginner's Guide (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 05:11:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18844309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyFork/pseuds/HappyFork
Summary: Davey runs into Coda a few years after the release of the Beginner's Guide and they catch up.





	It's Been a While

It was the fifth and final day of GDC 2019. Katie was holed up at a small table in the Starbucks across 3rd street from the convention center. She had her face buried in her laptop, jotting down notes for game ideas and bookmarking download links for engines she wanted to try out. The week had been inspiring and energizing for her in ways she was not expecting.

In fact, it hadn’t started out that way. She was a nervous wreck at the beginning, but she forced herself to attend anyway. She would be damned if some dude she cut off ties with years ago would dictate how she could enjoy her interests.

It was three and a half years since the Beginner’s Guide came out and she hadn’t allowed herself to attend public events since then. Especially not gaming events and especially not ones where she knew he was attending as well. And she knew he was here. Luckily, she retained some friends from that era of her life who kindly alerted her to those kinds of things. It was these friends that told her Beginner’s Guide came out in the first place. But, she thought, she couldn’t even recognize pictures of herself from three years ago, much less eight. For this and an uncountable number of other reasons, she was grateful for her decision to transition.

Besides, she thought pleasantly while looking out at the foot traffic around the con, I’ve been lucky enough that I haven’t even ran into him.

Her serenity was cut off by the chair across from her scooting out and a familiar voice that made her heart jump into her throat.

“Coda?”

She looked gravely up at the face of Davey Wreden. The man who ruined her life. In the flesh for the first time in nearly a decade.

“Is that really you, Coda? I can’t believe it. You’ve… changed so much.”

The words dug like a knife in her ears. Not that she was expecting anything different. Davey was an expert at that liberal over-enthusiastic phony allyship. You can mention I’m trans, she thought. It’s not offensive. I know you just don’t want to say it out loud.

Katie sat silently, staring daggers at Davey as he took a seat.

“I mean. I barely recognized you. How have you been? You’ve obviously- I mean, when did… this… start?” Davey gestured at Katie generally.

Katie was panicking. She didn’t know what to do. She tried not to talk in public as it is, and now she couldn’t even if she wanted to. She just desperately wanted Davey to take the hint and leave, but she knew he would never or could never do that. She stared like a deer in headlights as he kept rambling.

“I mean, maybe that’s not my business. It’s good to see you. How have you been? Did you enjoy the con? I’ve gotta say, I’m really happy to see you’re here. Not just to get a chance to talk to you again but, like, it’s GDC! Does that mean you’re getting back into game dev? That would be incredible! I mean I- you know- did you see the Beginner’s Guide? I know you probably hated it considering, well, it was exactly what you hate. But if it inspired you to get back into game dev then I’m okay with that! That was the goal all along, anyway. Did you do a specific track or did you bounce back and forth between talks? I wanted to do some bouncing, but I always found myself in the narrative classes and summits. It was so awesome. Are you still doing source engine stuff? I didn’t see a lot of mentions of that this year. I know that Valve is working on Source 2 or whatever they’re calling it. Do you think that you’ll work in that. Oh shit, did you see the Enjin thing yesterday? I had never even heard of Godot before then. Unity is, like, the thing for indie devs but for some reason I never really got into it. Maybe I should give Godot a shot. Do you think-“

“Davey, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Huh?” He’s caught off guard. “I just- it’s been so long. I just wanted to catch up.”

“Well I don’t. I would have been happy if I went my entire life without seeing you again. Please leave me alone.”

“What? Come on Coda. I said I was sorry, like, so many times. What do you want from me?”

“I told you what I want. I want you to leave me alone.”

“But. Why? I mean, I know why. That was a stupid question. But can’t you give me a chance to show you I’ve changed? That I’m genuinely committed to doing right by you.”

Katie hesitates for a second. This clearly isn’t the place to get into this kind of conversation. If someone notices that she’s here- that she’s the Coda from the Beginner’s Guide- her privacy is gone forever. Her life will be publicly and inexorably tied to Davey’s forever. But she also knows that he won’t leave her alone. He’ll dog her to the ends of the Earth if it means the chance of placating his guilt and making sure he comes off as a good guy.

So, fuck it, let’s do this here, she thinks.

“No you’re not. You’re clearly not. You have demonstrated repeatedly that you will disrespect my wishes time and time again. You will just do what you want to do and then beg forgiveness over and over. And won’t stop until I give it to you. Well, I’m not forgiving you, Davey Wreden. I never will. Walk away. Now.”

Katie closes her laptop and scoots out her chair. Davey reaches a hand across the table and puts it on hers in a gesture begging her to stay seated. Katie recoils from his touch.

Davey launches into another ploy. “Listen, Coda, I know I’ve done bad things. Unforgivable things. I know I’m doing them again. I… am coming to terms with the fact that we probably won’t be friends again. Although I’m not discounting that possibility.” Davey pauses on this sentence for a few seconds, but only gets an enraged glare back from Katie in response. “But that’s not what I’m trying to do here. You are so wonderfully talented, Coda. I’ve always said that my primary goal, first and foremost, is to get you to make games again.”

“Jesus, Davey. I knew you were self-centered and disingenuous but you’re full on bullshitting me right now. I can’t tell if you honestly believe that, just because I stopped showing you my games, that I stopped making them. We talked about this a lot, but I never realized until right now that you have really convinced yourself that sharing art is the same thing as creating art. Do you never make anything for you, just to enjoy? Do you have to publish a game before it becomes something real in the world?

I’ve told you this time and time again and it baffles me how you can’t seem to grasp the concept, but none of the things I sent you were games in the traditional sense. It was me fucking around, learning how the Source engine worked, learning game dev as self-expression. They were the equivalent of doodles in a notebook, and it was you who twisted them into something else.”

“Wait, you’re still making games? Can I…?”

“Jesus Davey. Do you think I would really give you my shit again after that Beginner’s Guide stunt?”

“Well. Okay. No, I guess. I get it.”

“Hey, aren’t you happy? You got what you wanted without even trying. I’m still making games.” Katie smirks at Davey’s defeated face. She knows that that wasn’t what he really wanted, and she needs him to admit it to himself.

“Yeah. I guess.” Davey sighs. Katie stands up and begins to collect her things. Not an admittance, but she’ll take an end to the conversation she didn’t want to be having in the first place. As Katie walks away from the table, Davey speaks again, quietly. “Why can’t we be friends again?”

“What?” Katie stops and turns around, waiting just long enough to be assured he wasn’t talking to her.

Unfortunately, he was. “How can I become the person who is able to be friends with you again? How do I stop myself from destroying our relationship.”

Katie is a little baffled, at least partially by the sincerity with which he says this completely tone deaf thing. “It’s a little too late for that.”

“Just tell me how to be a better person, Coda. Tell me how to be worthy of your friendship.”

“Get the fuck over yourself dude. Don’t put me on a pedestal and make me out to be some unattainable standard just to externalize your own shittiness!”

Davey continues, talking past Katie. “I can recognize when I fuck up, but I can’t make the next step. I can’t actually fix the behavior. What do I do besides feel bad for myself?”

Katie knows at least part of the answer. You have to let yourself feel bad about it, Davey. You can’t go around blaming other people. Recognizing you did a bad thing and grappling with the weight of that bad thing are two vastly different things. But she knows she won’t give him a satisfying answer, at least partially because she knows he really doesn’t want one. He wants an easy answer, and there is none. So she tells him what she’s told him before, and she hopes it sticks this time.

“You’re not my problem to solve.” And Katie walks out the door of the coffee shop.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. I wrote this just to get it out of my head. Thanks for reading this far!


End file.
